Enter the World of Dark Social: Part 2

In the first post of this series, we looked at what dark social really is and where the term came from. Now we’ll find out why it can be a problem for your online marketing strategy.
First, take a look at the graph below. It represents the social traffic sources of The Atlantic, highlighted in a post by Alexis C. Madrigal, who first coined the term “dark social” in 2012.

Obviously dark social may not have this much of an impact on every business, but it definitely affects your digital marketing analytics. According to a report on dark social by RadiumOne, 32% of people who share content online will only share via dark social.
“After an individual has shared content, Dark Social generates clickback data. With high intimacy and relevance through one-to-one or one-to-few sharing, Dark Social doesn’t always generate the volume of clickbacks as the one-to-many sharing on Facebook. However, the volume is significant and of great incremental value when investing into social media and digital marketing campaigns.”
A website’s referral traffic accounts for a significant amount of its social media ROI. Yet if the traffic analytics data is missing or incorrect, that could lead us to make mistakes or make the wrong decisions with our marketing strategies.
So if you don’t want to waste time, effort or money, dark social is important to know about! Now in the final post of this series, we’ll discuss what you should do about dark social.